As China has become one of the largest economic entities in the world, many studies focus on corporate governance in China. In 2001, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) transplanted the outside director mechanism from the United States and the United Kingdom. CSRC hoped that outside directors could play a control role to monitor the behaviours of controlling shareholders, protecting the interests of minority shareholders. However, since it was established, the Chinese outside director mechanism has played an unsatisfactory control role because they are not truly independent of the controlling shareholders. In contrast, many Chinese outside directors use their Guanxi connections (a particular kind of social connections in China) to play a resource acquisition role very well. Based on the theories of the firm, the resource dependence theory, studies of Guanxi and the path dependence theory, this thesis finds that when Chinese outside directors use their Guanxi connections to play their resource acquisition role, their independence and fiduciary duties required by CSRC is compromised.

This thesis analyses information disclosure in clinical practice from a legal, ethical and professional perspective. It examines therapeutic privilege, the duty of candour and the application of virtue ethics to truth-telling in nursing practice. I argue that each of these areas requires further clarity, articulation and application in order to assist the decision-making process of health care professionals and improve disclosure practices. In analysing these areas this thesis recognises the context of disclosure practices in relation to respect for patient autonomy and trust in the patient-health care professional relationship. The first published paper at the core of this thesis considers the status of therapeutic privilege in English law and concludes that further clarification is needed to establish its legitimacy. I argue that the shift in English law towards a disclosure standard judged by reference to the reasonable patient requires a doctrine of therapeutic privilege. There are strong ethical arguments in favour of information disclosure, particularly founded on respect for patient autonomy. As such, further clarification is needed to identify and define the grounds on which this exception exists, when the information can lawfully be withheld and how this exception extends to the rest of the health care team, particularly nurses. The second paper examines the ethical and practical considerations that underpin the disclosure of medical errors to patients. This provides a foundation for a discussion of how the law can best support a duty of candour. I argue for the introduction of a statutory duty of candour and analyse the current legal mechanisms and proposals for addressing this issue. The final paper argues that virtue ethics is a useful approach from which to explore decisions relating to information disclosure. Its explicit focus upon moral character, the role of emotion, intention and the importance of practical judgement are considered from the nurse's perspective. This thesis contributes to the dialogue on information disclosure on a number of levels. In terms of methodological approach, it recognises the importance of the synthesis of law and ethics in addressing issues in clinical practice. It uses an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating both legal and ethical perspectives, to examine the substantive questions as well as incorporating reference to empirical research to further underpin its normative claims. Moreover, this thesis considers the nursing perspective in relation to issues of information disclosure to explore the role of the nurse in decision-making regarding disclosure practices.

Orientador: Ricardo Montiagudo / Banca: José Carlos Bruni / Banca: Paulo Roberto Licht dos Santos / Resumo: A Fundamentação da metafísica dos costumes tem por finalidade encontrar o princípio supremo da moralidade. Segundo Kant, somente a razão é suficientemente capaz de fornecer, totalmente a priori, o princípio incondicionado da moralidade. Surge, porém, um problema: por que é que devemos nos submeter à lei moral? O que é capaz de motivar o homem a agir conforme o imperativo categórico e, portanto, moralmente? O presente trabalho pretende examinar, a partir dos apontamentos realizados por Kant, como pode o homem agir motivado pela lei, motivação esta necessária para que a moral se estabeleça. / Abstract: The Groundwork Metaphysic of Morals is to find the supreme principle of morality. According to Kant, the only reason is sufficiently capable of providing, quite a priori, the principle unconditional of morality. Appears, however, a problem: why should we submit to the moral law? What is able to motivate a man to act as the categorical imperative and therefore morally? This study seeks to examine, from notes made by Kant, as can the man acts motivated by the law, the motivation necessary for the moral is established. / Mestre

Conscious and carefully planned decision making is a part of management containing planning, organization, operative management, motivation and control. All these components of management as well as their effective functioning are dependent on knowledge, data transfer and information processing and holding. If their acquisition is not or cannot be dependent on an activity of deciding subject itself (or dependent on an optional cooperation with other subjects) and data and information are essential and determinant in social point of view, then the third persons must be bound to provide them. A duty to provide such information must be set by legal rules. For purposes of this work, an information duty is specified as a legally binding duty of certain subject to provide information to another subject whose breach results in a rise of legal liability. Objects of this duty are data and information recognized by legal regulations as relevant for control and decision process. Subject of this work is a description and subsequent analysis of regulations of information duty in business relations in domestic legislation, especially information duty of entrepreneurs towards customers and consumers. Fighting this aim, contract basis of information duty is accentuated. The analysis of information duty is further coupled with characteristics of elementary legal tools how to protect the authors, providers and receivers of data and information, and also with the essential characteristics of public and private responsibility for breach of information duty.

Este trabalho estuda a significância e abrangência do serviço de plantão psicológico oferecido ao efetivo de duas Companhias da Polícia Militar do Estado de São Paulo por psicólogos e estagiários do LEFE/USP entre 2001 e 2004. Foram entrevistados 04 sujeitos, dois de cada unidade, aos quais se dirigiu a pergunta: “que sentido tem para você o plantão psicológico oferecido nesta Companhia?” Foi possível compreender, a partir dos depoimentos colhidos, que os policiais percebem o serviço de plantão psicológico de forma positiva. Alguns sujeitos apontaram modificações na forma de lidar com a própria vida após terem sido atendidos em plantão. Outros salientaram a importância de continuidade do trabalho. Assim, o plantão psicológico oferecido à PM demonstrou pertinência como forma de acolhimento ao sofrimento dos policiais em questão. / This survey examines the meaning and the reach of psychological attendance service offered to two Companies of Military Police of São Paulo by psychologists and trainees of LEFE/USP between 2001 e 2004. The Ss are 04, two of each Company, and they answered the question: “what do you think about the psychological attendance service that we offer here?” It was possible to hold, after data collecting, that policemen see psychological attendance in a positive way. Some of them told about modifications in their own lives after their experience with psychological attendance. Others mentioned the importance of continuity of the service. Therefore, the service of psychological attendance offered at the military police seemed to be effective to hold policemen suffering.

The European Union (EU) increasingly participates in various arrangements at the international level in order to further the objectives of the Union. Yet, such participation poses challenges in terms of ensuring that the EU has an effective voice, whilst also ensuring certainty and clarity for other participants. This thesis focuses on the EU’s participation in the decision-making processes of multilateral fora in the field of maritime affairs in order to examine how these challenges can be met. The thesis explores the legal mechanisms in both EU law and international law that accommodate the ability of the EU to participate in international arrangements. It will consider whether these mechanisms ensure clarity and certainty to the key actors involved and whether consistency exists between the internal and external mechanisms. Through collecting, examining, and analysing historical and contemporary materials relating to the shaping and operating of the internal and external legal mechanisms, this thesis aims to explain and analyse how the legal mechanisms are established and how they can be adapted to meet the challenges facing the EU, its Member States, third States, and international institutions in a clearer and more consistent manner. The research diagnoses several key factors that have contributed to the possible ambiguity, uncertainty, and inconsistency of these mechanisms, including the evolving nature of shared competence and a heavy reliance on the Court of Justice in ascertaining and safeguarding the contours of the EU legal order and its interface with the international legal order. It then examines how the internal legal mechanisms have been projected externally, by using selected case studies of the participation of the EU in the International Maritime Organisation, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, and Regional Fisheries Management Organisations. This thesis illustrates that although various mechanisms have been adopted internally and externally to tackle the challenges facing the EU’s participation, several sets of asymmetries can be found across different legal mechanisms. The thesis evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanisms and it further suggests that adopting the mixed-participation mode for the EU and its Member States to participate in the multilateral fora may be preferable, or indeed necessary, even in areas where the EU enjoys an exclusive competence.

Wireless sensor networks are often battery powered and therefore their power consumption is of critical importance. Power requirements can be reduced by switching off radios when they are not needed and by using multi-hop communications to reduce the length of the radio links. Multi-hop communications however require message routing through the network. The Routing Protocol for lossy networks (RPL) has been designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for seamless integration of wireless sensor networks in the Internet. For switching on and off radios, radio duty cycling (RDC) protocols have been added to the traditional medium access control (MAC) protocols. Despite the fact they belong to different layers in the communications stack, it is intuitively clear that the choice of a specific RDC protocol for saving energy can influence the performances of RPL. Exploring experimentally this influence was the initial goal of this research. A 25 nodes wireless sensor network using Zolertia Z1 motes and the Contiki software was used for this investigation. Performance measurements without RDC protocol and with the three different RDC protocols readily available in Contiki were organized and the results of the experiments were compared. Unfortunately, with all three RDC protocols, serious malfunctions obscured the experimental results. Those malfunctions did not show up in absence of a RDC protocol and they could not be reproduced by our simulation studies. To tackle this issue, the behavior of the RDC protocols was scrutinized by means of experimental set-ups that eliminated as much as possible all non RDC related issues. Many, quite varied, malfunctions were discovered which all could have caused the observed RPL issues. Further research and better experimental set-ups made clear that all the discovered RDC malfunctions could be attributed to two real-world facts that were not considered by the implementers of the Contiki RDC protocols. The first cause is the small frequency difference between hardware real time clocks in stand-alone motes. The second is that the threshold built in the receiver to detect radio activity is much higher than the minimum level of signal that the same receiver can decode. Work-arounds have been designed for the observed malfunctions and they have been tested by means of a systematic comparison of the performance of the three modified RDC protocols. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Este trabalho apresenta um serviço como uma pesquisa participativa interventiva que objetiva compreender possibilidades de atenção psicológica à Terceira Idade a partir da demanda dessa população. Como prática clínica integra o Projeto de Atenção Psicológica em Instituições do Laboratório de Estudos e Prática em Psicologia Fenomenológica Existencial do IPUSP. A ênfase na compreensão da demanda dos próprios idosos visa dar voz a essa população, permitindo a reflexão sobre o fazer do psicólogo junto à Terceira Idade, através de pro-vocações surgidas nessa experiência. Pautado na fenomenologia existencial que visa o homem como ser-no-mundo-com-outros, o serviço, enquanto atenção psicológica, referencia-se no Plantão Psicológico enquanto modalidade de intervenção, pois apresenta como elemento pertinente a atitude clínica do plantonista: disposição afetiva para acompanhar quem procura por esse espaço, chamando por sua demanda enquanto testemunha seu caminhar no momento da procura. A pesquisa interventiva participativa foi escolhida como possibilidade de investigação e de intervenção: fazer saber psicológico em ação. O registro da pesquisa foi feito por diário de bordo, visando a escritura das afetações provocadas nos encontros com os participantes no acontecer da pesquisa. A historicidade revisitada por meio da rememoração e revivência dos registros, permitiu a identificação de dois momentos da intervenção: o primeiro configurado como grupo de discussão e o segundo como espaço de narrativas. Esta possibilidade de compreensão indica a pro-cura dos idosos pelo serviço como um tempo-espaço de cuidar-de-ser. / This work presents the creation of a service as interventive participative research, aiming to understand possibilities for psychological attention to elder people departing from their own demand. As a clinical praxis, it integrates the Psychological Attention at Institutions Project from the Laboratory of Studies and Practice in Existential Phenomenological Psychology of IPUSP. Emphasis on the elders own demand intents to give them their proper voice, as well allowing reflexion on the psychologists work toward that population, through emergent provocations during such experience. By the phenomenological view of man as a being-in-the-world-with others, that service refers itself to the interventive practice of Psychological Attendance as psychological attention characterized by the psychologists clinical attitude: his affective disposition to accompany those who come to the service facilitates them to claim for own demand, by being a witness in such search. The interventive participative research was chosen as a possibility for both intervention and investigation; it allows pursuing the psychological work in action. The research register was through field diaries, which contained affections promoted during the group encounters. Historicity, reviewed from the memories of the registers, propitiated to identify two moments at the interventions: first as a discussion group and latterly as locus for narrative. Such possibility of comprehension indicates that elderly people search for psychological attention as a possible way to take care of their own being.

Long haulage of heavy-duty trucks weighing over 15-ton stands for nearly 50% of the fuelconsumption among trucks, making them the most fuel consuming category. This indicatesthe potential benefits in improving the fuel efficiency for said category. Hybridization is onepossible solution.Hybrid vehicles are vehicles with two or more power sources in the powertrain. Differentpowertrain configurations, hybridization levels and hybrid concepts are best suitedfor different applications. With prices for fossil fuels constantly rising hybridization is animportant technology to improve fuel efficiency.Different variations of configurations and concepts enables many choices when decidingon a hybrid driveline. A simulation tool for efficiently comparing various hybrid drivelineswould be a great asset when deciding on a configuration for a certain vehicle application. Forthis thesis the application in focus is the previously mentioned category, a heavy duty longhauler weighing 36-ton.The modeling approach used for the simulation tool is called quasistatic modeling or"backward modeling". This name comes from, based on a chosen drive cycle, the resistingforces which act on the vehicle can statically be calculated at each step from the velocityprofile. The required power to drive along the drive cycle can then be calculated backwardswithin the powertrain resulting in a fuel consumption for the combustion engine. For thisthe free QSS-toolbox for Matlab Simulink has been used as a base and modified when needed.The configuration chosen to be implemented is a parallel electric hybrid and was chosenfor its good characteristics for the type of driving highways provide. For this configurationtwo types of controllers are used, one being an Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategycontroller and the other a simple, rule based heuristic controller.The results for both controllers show small benefits with hybridization of the longhauler compared with the conventional which in the long run would make bigger differencebecause of the large consumption in whole. A sensitivity analysis was also done showingthat improving conventional vehicle parameters can be as beneficial as hybridization.

Les réseaux de capteurs sans fil constituent une partie essentielle de la couche " perception " de l'Internet des objets (IoT ou Internet of Things), et reconnectent le monde numérique créée par les réseaux informatiques classiques au monde physique. Ils font émerger sans cesse de nouvelles applications grâce à un nombre important d'éléments, qui collectent des données de l'environnement, les traitent et les disséminent. Aujourd'hui, circulent dans l'IoT des volumes de données importants, très variés et souvent générés de façon continue mettant plus l'accent sur l'information et non sur sa source. Cette indifférence sur la source est renforcée par les déploiements interchangeables et redondants des réseaux de capteurs. Dans cette thèse, nous nous attachons à l'intégration des principes et mécanismes des réseaux orientés contenus dans les réseaux de capteurs sans fil afin d'améliorer le fonctionnement et les performances de ces derniers. Nous nous sommes intéressés, dans un premier temps, à la pertinence temporelle des données dans les réseaux de capteurs centrés sur les contenus. En effet, nous avons opté pour la prise en considération de la durée de vie (ou fraîcheur) des contenus et proposé deux approches (une réactive et l'autre proactive) pour leur mise à jour. Dans la seconde partie de la thèse, nous avons proposé un mécanisme fondé sur le contrôle du duty-cycle afin d'atténuer l'impact de l'inondation principalement utilisée pour disséminer les intérêts envoyés par les utilisateurs et les contenus correspondant. Pour cela, nous avons cherché à maintenir un sous-ensemble suffisant de nœuds nécessaires à la satisfaction des intérêts reçus par le réseau. Le défi principal était de réduire la consommation d'énergie grâce à un mécanisme d'endormissement/réveil des nœuds capteurs tout en gardant un bon taux de satisfaction des requêtes. Enfin, pour améliorer la mise en cache des contenus dans un réseau de capteurs, nous avons étudié les stratégies existantes et recensé les paramètres impactant leur performance. Nous avons ensuite proposé une stratégie plaçant les contenus sur des nœuds en fonction de leur degré et leur distance de la source. Une compagne de simulations et des comparaisons avec d'autres solutions, montrent que les mécanismes proposés garantissent de bonnes performances en termes de latence, de consommation d'énergie et de taux de satisfaction des intérêts. / Wireless sensor networks are an essential part of the Internet of Things (IoT) "perception" layer. IoT connects the digital world created by conventional computer networks to the physical world. They continually bring new applications to life through a large number of elements that collect, process and disseminate environmental data. Today, moves accross the IoT a large and varied volume of data. Data is generated in a continuous way with a greater emphasis on information and not on its source. This indifference to the source is reinforced by the interchangeable and redundant deployments of the sensor networks. In this thesis, we focus on integrating the principles and mechanisms of content-oriented networks in wireless sensor networks to improve the operation and performance of these networks. Hence, we first focused on the temporal relevance of data in content-centric sensor networks. Indeed, we considered the content lifetime (or freshness) and we proposed two approaches (one reactive and the other proactive) for their update. In the second part of the thesis, we proposed a mechanism based on the control of the duty-cycle to overcome the impact of the flooding mainly used to disseminate the interests sent by the users and the corresponding contents. For this purpose, we tried to maintain a sufficient subset of nodes necessary to satisfy the interests received by the network. The main challenge was to reduce energy consumption thanks to a mechanism controlling the node activity while keeping a good interest satisfaction rate. Finally, to improve the content caching in a sensor network, we have studied the existing strategies and identified the parameters impacting their performance. We then proposed a strategy placing the contents according to the degree of the nodes and their distance from the source. An exhaustive comparative study with other solutions show that the proposed mechanisms guarantee good performance in terms of latency, energy consumption and interest satisfaction rate.